To
be honest, my family has never been very religious, especially
not the kind that would take a moment before breaking
bread to thank any particular
deity for whatever mess
o' vittles
happened to be slopped in our respective troughs. Pragmatically
speaking, with eight brothers and sisters that brief
conversation with Jebus could mean the difference
between
a fat drumstick
and a scrawny, stringy wing.

Therefore it was with some surprise when, some years
ago, after decades of showing no inclination towards
the sacred,
one
of my many nieces suddenly clasped Jebus to her heaving
bosom. From my modestly cynical point of view it was
less her
desire to someday climb Jacob's Ladder and play pinochle
at god's right hand than it was to have a socially acceptable
cudgel of fear and
guilt
to
wield on her two burgeoning progeny.

At last the day finally arrived when, at a not-so-distant
Thanksgiving get-together, said niece asked to join her
in prayer before we all tucked into our heaping
plates of gobbley
goodness.
It was the usual benediction, full of gratefulness for
the assembled family and all that god has given us, etc.,
etc., amen.

I waited for the noxious poot of smug
piety to waft upwards into the
cobwebs and then it was my turn.

"And thank you, lord, for the tornadoes that wipe
out the trailer parks full of poor people. Thank you
for
strokes and cancer and crib death. Thank you for the
appendix,
male nipples, wisdom teeth, and that little fish that
likes to swim up the urethra. Thank
you for plagues, floods, drought, the Iraq war,
and Jerry Jones. Thank you for faith healers,
snake-handlers
and the
systematic rape of unknown thousands of choir boys.
But most of all, lord, thank you for keeping me
fat and happy while millions of children starve to
death. Hallelujah!"

We've had no prayers since.

-------------

While I'm being an insufferable little
shit, it seems that a recent Time Magazine article,
written by Joe Klein,
took
a nasty
shot at
atheists for not showing up in force to help the victims
of
the
recent
tornadoes
in
Oklahoma.

As it turns out, Joe
was wrong. Really wrong.
As commentator Hemant Mehta put it "Maybe these [Humanist] groups have no tax
exempt status and therefore can’t exactly afford
to have the t-shirts for everyone to wear so that you
know when they are out in force during a volunteer
effort."
=Lefty=